Frightful Friday ~ Spooky Cards

For my last Frightful Friday post I have some spooky cards for you. I used some newer Halloween stamps, but mixed them with an older patterned paper. They also contain some of my favorite embellishments and styles out there right now. I incorporated glitter, bling, ruffled papers and ribbon, lollipop flowers and something different...wispy webs! I hope you love them as much as I do!

Need more Halloween inspiration? See all the clever creations on the Heart 2 Heart Blog this week!

Fun Halloween Decor

I love to bring out all of my Halloween decor at the beginning of the month. My kids will help me decorate the house, but usually get distracted by some of the toys we've had for many years and reminisce. I found some new goodies this year and also created some of my own decorations.

This first idea is something that the kids can help with. The idea came from the first grade teacher next door. She had a print out of a spider web on a piece of paper and attached a sheet of wax paper over it. The children then trace the web with regular Elmer's glue. Let it dry completely and then peel it from the wax paper. Add a spider and use tiny glue dots in the corners to attach it to the window, corner of a niche or picture frame to make it haunted!

Here is one of my new finds. I don't live near a Tai Pan Trading store and that's probably a good thing. On one of our summer travels I found this frame with a jack-o-lantern on it. I placed a row of tea light candles just in front of it to capture light on his face. So cool!

Something new I created to greet visitors this year is a spooky jack-o-lantern tree. What an easy and practically free project. I grabbed some dead branches from the back yard and spray painted them black. I stuck them in a flower pot, weaved spider webs all over and hung some old tin lanterns on the branches that I've had for a few years now.

Here is another fun find from Tai Pan Trading. It did not originally have the glass vase in the center. I added it to hold candy at first, but once the kids devoured that I filled it with some creepy eyeballs. It looks really great at night with all the candles lit!

I hope you enjoyed some of my Halloween home decor. Tomorrow is the last day for Frightful Friday, so come back for more spooks!

Fabric Singed Flowers

Yesterday I shared with you the fun beaded necklaces that my daughter and I made. Well, today is Mom's turn to play. This is certainly more "grown up" jewelry. However, I can guarantee you that my daughter will be begging and batting her lashes to borrow them!

The fabulous Close To My Heart consultant Tresa Black shared this craft on her U-Stream class a few weeks ago. You can see the tutorial here. I'll admit that I was a bit intimidated at first and thought...."I'll never be able to do that". I was a good student though and really paid attention and now I want to make more in every color I can find!!

The first one is similar to the colors Tresa used. I stamped black Staz On ink on a light gray satin fabric. She made her flower a bracelet, but I chose to make mine a necklace. I'll be able to wear this with several outfits.

The gold flower came about from my daughter's left over school project. I did not stamp on the fabric at all and just singed them to create the petals. The best surprise was to discover that as the edges singed it turned a toasty color giving the entire flower more dimension and interest. I created a bracelet for it to rest upon. The colors of gold and cream will look gorgeous with those Holiday outfits.

Here my daughter is modeling it. It does not look nearly as large on my wrist, but with a stretchy band her or I can wear it comfortably.

Krafts for the Kids!

Halloween is almost here! We have been very busy the last couple of weeks! By "we" I mean my daughter and I. She is my little shadow and has a creative soul just like her mom. I certainly can't leave her out of all the crafts and fun this season.

For this final week leading up to Halloween night I will share all the crafts her and I have created. There will be decorations for ourselves and our home!

Our first fun project are these clever beaded necklaces. They are so easy and inexpensive. I found a giant bag of wooden beads in assorted colors and sizes. Some of the smaller beads were just a brown wood so I strung them on some thread and painted them black first. Then you just string your beads to your desired length. Leave some space between them so you can tie funky ribbons on. Finally, I used rub-ons for the "Trick or Treat" and "boo". I used some clear nail polish over them to seal it and prevent the rub-ons from rubbing off!

Here she is modeling them to give you an idea of the length.

...and here they are just laid out on a table.

So spooktacular & fashionable, all the witches are wearing them this season!

Frightful Friday ~ Tags & Treats

Today's post is something frightful and a few sweet treats. These tags were created from the new stamp set Fright Night. I used the haunted colors of Goldrush, Black and the new Pear green and Gypsy purple. I blinged them up a bit with some orange bubbles and black glitter.

Here are a few sweet ideas to give as treats to friends, children and co-workers!

This little goodie bag was made just for "Boo-ing" some co-workers! Hopefully they will pass on the yumm-i-ness!

The little milk carton is from a Sizzix die cut. I simply did additional stamping and dressed it up.

Instead of pretzels in this long bag I used lots of dark chocolate Hershey Kisses! So good and good for you!

Finally this little matchbox is also a Sizzix die cut. Just added some stamping and a wiggly eyed cutie!

I hope you've been enjoying the Frightful Friday posts so far. Only one more Friday to go!

H2H Embossing Challenge

I could not "resist" the challenge on the Heart2Heart Blog this week. It's all about embossing. Dry embossing or heat embossing. I chose a heat embossing with a resist technique and lots of layers.

This first card features an older, but favorite stamp set, Vintage Christmas. The first layer is some Christmas text done in Desert Sand. I then used a clear stamp pad and clear embossing powder for the mistletoe image. Once heated and cooled I sponged over the top with Cranberry, New England Ivy and Olive ink. The card was finished off according to a template in the Wishes book called Lower Layers. {I flipped the template as you can see, because my layers are not 'low'}

This card was done the same way, just with different stamps and a frosty blue color combo. Don't you just love this little Polar Bear?

Inchie Flower Card

There are so many ways to create flowers for our projects. They can be made from stamping, paper, fabrics and ribbon. Here is an idea I got from a pillow while looking at a design blog. I cut several half inch squares of colonial white card stock and punched a 1 1/2 inch circle out of the card stock as well. Then starting from the outside of the circle I glued each square around the circle being sure to overlap them as I spiraled around to the center. To fully secure my flower pieces I used some hodge podge over the entire surface. To create the card I mounted the flowers on a piece of embossed card stock and ruffled sheer ribbon down just one side. I created a sentiment from a couple of Spellbinders labels and then everything was mounted on Desert Sand card stock. I thought it was unique and different, tell me what you think!

Frightful Friday Countdown

What do you do with an old white wooden frame that has been stashed in your garage for a couple of years? Paint it black and turn it into...



...a Halloween Countdown frame.


After painting the entire frame black and coating it with lacquer, I managed to very carefully use my husbands 'scary' staple gun and string 4 rows of wire across the back. Then came the fun part. Creating each individual and unique tag to hang from each wire. I kept coming back to my scrap room and thinking up another idea for each date. It is really a lot of fun looking at each little tag. They all look great together because I kept the same colors, stamps and theme of the Hooligans paper on each one. Take a closer look and see if you can find a favorite tag!

Finally, I'll leave you with a little treat for the taste buds. I made these the other morning and they were Oh, so yummy! I began by using a pumpkin bread mix from Costco. It was the Krusteaz brand. Instead of a loaf of bread I wanted to make them into muffin cups. Now here's what I added to it. After spooning the cups about 3/4 full I dolloped a mixture of cream cheese, egg and Stevia sugar into the centers of each cup. It's the perfect combination of pumpkin bread and cheesecake filling. Especially still warm from the oven, what a treat!

Come back next Friday for more treats and some Halloween decor!

Count Your Blessings This Fall

Over on H2H this week is a challenge that I couldn't just 'leaf" alone. Ha ha, just a little foliage humor for you. The challenge was to create a project with leaf or tree images. After I created my November Back 2 Basics pages I used the leftovers to create this card. I used the stamp Nature's Vein which has beautiful images of leaves. They are perfect for two step stamping because of the leaf base and the leaf veins. I used the gorgeous autumn colors of Goldrush, Autumn Terracotta, Garden Green, Olive, Bamboo and Desert Sand. The sheer organdy ribbon is from one of my trips to Tai Pan Trading. I finished off the leaves with some Martha Stewart glitter in copper, green and antiqued silver.



Here are the pages for the Back 2 Basics Club. You can see that same random stamped paper used on both pages. The template is from the new Magic book.

Be sure to visit the Heart 2 Heart Blog to see more creative projects by talented artists.

Skeleton Pages with Purple & Orange

These were my spooky Halloween pages for October. I love the color combo of green and purple, but I wanted to take the same pages and mix up the colors.


These pages are going to be perfect for those "girly" Halloween pics. The Goldrush orange really pops against the purple papers. The purple cardstock is the new Gypsy and the softer Amethyst. Check out the "spooky" ghost letters. This is achieved by stamping in Versamark ink then drying it with a heating tool. I finished it off by adding some orange bling.

Frightful Friday Coffin

I love mini albums, don't you? Here is a little mini album tucked away inside a wooden coffin. It is the project I will be teaching tomorrow. I found the little coffins at Michael's back in September. They are just a raw wood so there was a bit of preparation on my part. I used a black craft paint inside and out and then I coated them in a lacquer spray. Those Close To My Heart boxes really come in handy.

I used the Thriller stamp set to decorate the inside and out. On my skeleton I used some black glitter for the heart eye patch and an orange bling for his other eye.

On the cover of the mini tags I chose to use the vampire. I water brushed the pumpkin orange and used some black glitter on the crow.

Each page will hold a small 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch photo. Perfect for capturing a few snap shots from this year's celebration.

Come back next Friday for some more Halloween inspiration.